


January White

by GideonGraystairs



Category: The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Alec Lightwood Deserves Nice Things, Alternate Universe - Human, Coming Out, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Family Issues, Growing Up, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, New Year's Eve, New Year's Kiss, New Year's Resolutions, Religious Guilt, Self-Acceptance, Self-Hatred, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 05:54:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15382122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GideonGraystairs/pseuds/GideonGraystairs
Summary: A snapshot of Alec's life through New Year's eves and resolutions. Wherein a single holiday goes from a childish source of joy to a black hole of self-hatred to a fragile possibility for hope, and somewhere along the way Alec learns to love himself.





	January White

_This year is a sealed envelope; with apprehensive hope, we brace for anything. I swear, I understand that nothing changes that and the past will be the past, but the future is brighter than any flashback._

 

 

**14.**

New Year's is uncomplicated this year. It's a feast with his family, permission to stay up late watching awful Christmas flicks with his siblings, and all five of them counting down to midnight at the top of their lungs. It's a blanket fort in the living room, flashlights and ghost stories and his little brother smacking his arm for scaring him so bad.

It's 'be better' and 'work harder' and 'do well in school'. It's a smile on his face when he wakes up the next morning, feeling more refreshed than he has since the last year ticked down to its start. It's a sense of reinvention, like he can be anything and do anything and easily press the undo button on any mistakes he's made in the last 365 days.

At fourteen, New Year's is still a holiday - a wondrous mess of bright lights and rejuvenation, of wishes and resolutions and a chance to wipe the slate clean. It's a brand new year surrounded by the people Alec loves most in the whole wide world, and it's something precious to be giddy over for the next few weeks. It's still a good thing, still sits high in his throat where excitement always finds its place.

At fourteen, New Year's makes everything seem better and brighter, at least for a little while.

 

**15.**

Fifteen starts the same. It starts with a family meal and a harmless fight between siblings, with his mother's incredible cooking and his father's reassurance that it's fine for Alec to have just a sip of his wine, despite Maryse’s protests. It starts with laughter and love, with smiles and his sister ruffling his hair and this guilty feeling building up inside his stomach every time he looks at any of them.

The guilt is not the same, is different and new and unwelcome. It's awful and twisting and writhing in his gut like an elastic band snapping back into place every time it's stretched. It's vicious and volatile and makes him want to throw up each time he's asked a question, is like a lock clipped over his vocal chords and pulling him away from the conversations at hand.

It's the result of that exchange student that transferred into Alec's class two weeks before winter break. Or, more specifically, a result of the way Alec couldn't take his eyes off him and his sandy blond hair, his sapphire blue eyes, his taut tanned skin, his long fingers and impressive physique for a fifteen year old.

This year, Alec doesn't watch the cheesy chick flick. He sits in their mass of blankets and pillows with his knees curled up to hide his guilt-infected insides, and spends the entire movie staring at his sister and wondering if he should say something. If he could. Would she even understand if he did?

It's been a debate in his mind since the incident, since Martinik walked through the door to his math class. He wonders what Isabelle would say if he told her that, sometimes, he finds himself wondering what it would be like to hold the other boy's hand.

He doesn't tell her. The guilt is a monster eating him alive, and he knows that if he opened his mouth it would devour everything around him, too.

Fifteen is this tiny, inescapable hope that midnight will wash away these feelings. That in the New Year he will be able to completely redefine himself, to press the reset button and insert the traits he wants to have. It's fingers crossed as he crawls into bed that he'll wake up and the nagging guilt will be gone, that he'll wake up and look at Lydia Branwell the way the other boys do.

New Year's at fifteen is 'be good' and 'stop thinking about him' and 'spend more time with family'.

New Year's at fifteen is still bright and blinding hope. It's still wishes and wants and prayers for the future, still a happily painted fence for him to stand on his tiptoes and try to peer over. It's still rejuvenation and rebirth, though now it's tinged slightly with an undertone of the desperation for it to be everything it's cracked up to be, everything it used to be.

New Year's at fifteen is still hope, yes, but it's also the terrifying question of _'What if it doesn't change a thing?'_.

 

**16.**

Sixteen is different. Sixteen is sitting across from his mother as she shoots him a frown, tells him to stop pushing his food around and eat something. Sixteen is going to his room early, despite the hurt look on his little brother's face when he says he doesn't want to watch the movie with them. It's his door shut tight, a barricade between him and the rest of the world, and that awful feeling becoming so suffocating that it takes him ten minutes to figure out how to breathe properly again.

It's watching the clock tick up to midnight and feeling the guilt crawl through his intestines with every minute that passes, feeling wrong and out of place and wishing at 11:11 that midnight really could be a fresh start. That the new day will wipe away what's been building in him all year, will take the sin corrupting his organs and replace it with a virtue he could stand to show the rest of the world.

Sixteen is clearing his Internet history, clicking the soft grey x on 'does God still love gays' and 'list of sexuality definitions'. It's deleting that shirtless picture of a nameless model he has on his new phone and the bookmarks in his browser for support groups, a hand pressed to his chest to calm the crushing feeling around his heart. That's where fear goes, where anxiety and terror and worry make their home, and he wonders if ripping his heart apart would make the feelings go away.

Sixteen is 'be normal' and 'go to church more' and 'get a girlfriend'. It's laying on his bed alone as midnight passes, staring up at the ceiling and praying to any God listening that he isn't what he thinks he is.

At sixteen, New Year's is not bright or blinding and it is definitely not hope. It's desperation to such an extent that his bones tremble with the force of it. It's fits of rage and crushing panic when he wakes up and feels the same. It's anger turned to anything listening because this isn't fair, it's not _fair_ , and why would God make him this way only to punish him for being so?

It's the resignation that a New Year is not a new you, that you will always be the same person you were the year before, only now deluded by notions of renewal and reinvention. It's a bitter laugh with no one to hear it, because spending New Year's with the people you love doesn't mean you haven't spent the last year shutting them out. Because New Year's is not a clean slate or a get out of jail free card, and his choices - his flaws, his mistakes - aren't suddenly discredited by the turning of the Earth.

New Year's at sixteen is the beginning of a downward spiral he isn't sure he'll ever be able to stop.

Still. When the clock hits 4:53 AM, he finds himself bookmarking the support group forums again.

 

**17.**

Seventeen is the heavy rain that comes after a devastating tornado. It's a big number with little real significance. It's not being able to get a job or his driver's license, isn't becoming an adult or gaining the right to vote and drink (hopefully not both at once).

Even on a more personal scale, like making friends or finding love or getting his name on the honour role, his seventeenth year doesn't particularly stand out. It's barely distinguishable from sixteen, and nothing life-altering takes place.

And yet.

New Year's at seventeen is nothing like sixteen. It's not guilt or anger or shutting the door in his sister's face and later wishing she'd come barging through anyway. It's not a cleared browser, not the truth erased with the click of a button or the ghost of it haunting him into the coming year.

New Year's that year is shifting uncomfortably at the dining table, frowning into the mashed potatoes as his mother asks why he isn't spending the night with a friend. Why he isn't at a party like his sister. Why he's seemed so far away lately. Why he doesn't talk to them anymore.

His father watches silently from her side, but his expression matches her inquiries word for word.

New Year's that year is a shrug and being excused from the table early, is collapsing onto his bed and immediately whipping out his phone. It's pulling up the conversation he'd started two days ago with someone in the LGBT forum he visits most frequently. It's something close to excitement filling his throat as he types up reply after reply in record time.

It's that feeling in his chest - that fear, that anxiety, that terror, that worry - settling deeper inside of him where it isn't so obvious, where he doesn't have to see it and feel it all the time. It's the guilt in his gut spreading itself out through his whole being, less concentrated and obstructive and easier to ignore.

It's a new feeling, a feeling like maybe things can still be okay and there's still hope that he'll be happy again soon. It's the crushing self-assurance that he won't, that this will always be a thing in the back of his mind and it will never be okay that he couldn't make himself accept Lydia's request for a date.

Seventeen is not a hurricane of horror, of tears into the bedspread he's had since he was eight and gasping for breath around the truth he can't accept. Instead, it's his smile fading at 11:08 and bidding the boy he'd been talking to goodnight, is dropping his phone onto the bedside table and staring at the ceiling. Maybe if he stares hard enough, it won't crumble down around him like everything else has.

Seventeen is a less urgent kind of pain. A less obvious tumble down the spiral of devastation. It is the slow realization that he really can't force himself to be something he's not, but that maybe if he doesn't say anything about it to anyone ever, it won't have to matter.

He could be content alone for the rest of his life. A relationship isn't the most important thing in the world. He can live without being loved.

12:36 and a sob rips from his throat at the thought.

New Year's that year is not bright and blinding, but it's also not mocking and cruel. It's giving up - accepting that he's lost this war he's been waging against himself for years now. It's realizing that fleeing from the reality of the truth is easier than fighting the truth itself.

It's understanding that who you are is not the same as who you present yourself to be. That he can be a new person in the new year, that all he has to do is lie to those around him and talk about feelings he doesn't have. All he has to do is not talk about the feelings he does have.

He has only one resolution that year, and it rings with the reality of everything he's spent the last two years trying to make sense of: 'Be someone else.'

He can be anyone he wants to be when it comes to other people. All he has to do is smile and deny the things that don't fit the description of the person he's decided he is.

New Year's is a thing of fiction, in the end. A matter of perception. Reality doesn't have to match the myths it paints, as long as everyone believes the story.

Seventeen is grief. It makes its home beneath his collarbones and in his vocal chords.

 

**18.**

Eighteen is a revelation. A good one. It's clasping at the rungs forming in the downwards spiral and holding himself there, arms made strong by wars against themselves keeping him from falling any further downwards. It isn't pulling himself back up the coil, towards the middle ground between happy and miserable, but it's something. It's better than banging his bones against the corkscrew on his way down.

New Year's that year is no dining table and no guilt at the distance between him and his family. It's a red plastic cup clasped in his hand and watching his friends dance wildly to a beat nowhere near as intense as they make it out to be. It's looking away when he catches sight of Lydia making out with John, his chest thick and full and his collarbones feeling too sharp.

It's the clock ticking down to midnight, accompanied by the drunk shouts of half the senior class, and Jordan Kyle urging him to take a shot. Alec doesn't - he doesn't like to drink, doesn't like to lose control over himself, doesn't like to know that he could do or say something by accident that would destroy his life forever.

He smiles when midnight passes and most of the people around him end up making out, his shoulder blades pressing into the wall. It's the first year since he was fourteen that his throat finds itself filling with excitement, however small it may be.

Eighteen is big. It's massive. It's 'love yourself again' and 'be okay' and 'tell someone the truth'. It's slipping away from the party to catch his breath at the resolutions clinging heavily to his heart.

It's sitting on the bathroom floor at 1:47 in the morning, tiles digging into his legs and Jace digging into the deep dark place in his gut and his chest and his collarbone. It's his best friend asking if he's in love with some unattainable girl because he never has a girlfriend and he never talks about his crushes and he knows he can tell Jace anything, doesn't he?

Eighteen is his chest - terror, panic - so full it barely expands with the air he tries desperately to draw in. It's his stomach - guilt, shame - twisting and twisting and twisting and making him want to throw up more than just the truth that sits at the back of his tongue.

He looks away from Jace, shuts his eyes tighter and tighter until he can't feel the tears threatening to form in them. His fingers dig graves in his jeans deep enough to bury himself, nails tearing holes in the grout deep enough to bury the words bubbling up his throat.

"I'm gay."

Eighteen is the words out loud for the first time in his entire life. He feels sick and too hot and like he needs the world to stop turning for a second because he hasn't gotten a grip yet and he feels like he'll never get his balance back. He flinches at the hand that unceremoniously pats his knee, too sensitive and high-strung and caught up in praying to a God he no longer trusts to save him.

The new year begins with his best friend shrugging, downing the rest of his beer as he laughs out something along the lines of, "Hey, man. You haven't dated any boys, either. So who's the guy you've got the hots for?"

It begins with his breath leaving him so quickly he doesn't have the chance to catch it. Tears burn the backs of his eyes where relief has claimed the territory, his stomach empty of guilt and shame so suddenly that he almost has to gag. His vocal chords, his collarbone, feel like floodgates releasing the grief onto the shoulder of Jace's jacket, that awful feeling poured out in the form of a tear-stain and a shaking sob.

New Year's at eighteen is the first one to really feel like a new beginning. Like the start of something. Like a rebirth and a reinvention of himself into the person he always has been, always will be, but is only now able to look in the eye and not cringe at the sight of.

It's this inexplicable notion that maybe everything isn't better and brighter the way he'd expected it to be at fourteen, but it's significantly less awful and dark as it was at sixteen. It's the top of the mountain he'd been climbing, rocky on the way up with a massive wall to launch himself over at the pinnacle, but smooth and maybe even beautiful on the way down.

Maybe New Year's is not a chance to edit the script, but it's the choice of whether to continue the story you've set yourself up for or rewrite your lines entirely. Maybe it isn't pressing the reset button on rejecting Lydia or shutting out his family, but it's a chance to be honest or open the door again. New Year's is a chance.

Eighteen is not telling the world and it is not the year he fulfills all his resolutions. It is not the year he learns to love himself again, but it is the year that he slowly learns not to hate himself for the things he can't change.

It's the year he wakes up not with a smile, but with a breath of relief as he cries into the sheets because, for the first time in a long time, everything doesn't feel so hopeless.

 

**19.**

Nineteen is weird. He's at university now, far away from tear-stained sheets and family dinners, and it's the first New Year's that he spends without anyone he loves. His siblings are at parties or studying in their rooms, his parents safe and sound back home, and his closest friends are scattered across the country.

He spends half of it in his small apartment by himself, bouncing his feet on the floorboards and texting Aline to have a good time at her girlfriend's. A tiny smile finds his face at the thought, at the idea that he has people he can talk to about things he spent three years shutting away, has people who _get it_ in a way his sweet and supportive little sister never could. He has people he can turn to when the uncomfortable atmosphere around his parents makes his chest start writhing with anxiety again.

The rest of New Year's eve is spent awkwardly shuffling through the crowds on the street as he makes his way towards the small café nearby. It's after midnight by the time he reaches it, and relief is present behind his tired eyes when the sign reads 'open'.

Nineteen is ordering a black coffee and cursing when he can't find enough change to pay for it, is not really caring that everyone around him is giddy and full of newborn energy.

It's the guy behind him in line offering to pay for him, the guy he hadn't seen come in but who is actually really cute, now that he’s looking. It's his stomach clenching before his throat tingles with excitement because this is okay - he's allowed to notice these things now.

It's swooning at his - Magnus's - accent and feeling something stir in him, deep down where he's never been brave enough to venture. Where he's pushed every feeling he's ever had away, where he's crammed all his crushes and the part of him that notices cute boys in coffee shops.

Nineteen is smiling, soft and sweet, in spite of the coiling in his gut because this is not something he should be ashamed of, should feel guilty for. It isn't. He has to learn that. He’s scared that if he doesn’t now, he never will.

He makes his resolution in that moment, in the five minutes it takes to banish the painful twisting of his stomach from his mind. 'Accept yourself'.

Magnus is infuriatingly charming, and New Year's at nineteen is spent trying to pluck the wings off the butterflies sprouting inside him when they exchange phone numbers. His voice sticks to the roof of his mouth where infatuation makes his tongue heavy, where captivation and the beginnings of a crush have decided to take root.

New Year's that year is oddly underwhelming. Not as big of a deal as the years before. Maybe it's because there's less pressure placed on it to be something it can't - to change him and his life and make him happy when he's busy hating himself.

It's not bright or brilliant or hopeless or dark or awful or even a revelation. It's just a day. Just another year passing by too fast and too slow both at once. Just another excuse for his classmates to get drunk off their asses and make out with everyone in sight.

It's the anniversary of his first coming out, but definitely not his last. Even that doesn't seem like something to get all worked up about, especially when his sexuality is still a topic that's off limits at the dinner table and scarcely discussed away from it. When his father pointedly doesn't ask if he has a boyfriend and his mother pointedly does ask if he's been going to church lately.

Nineteen is...

Nineteen is oddly anti-climatic, really. In a good way. A way that says he's reached the point in his life where maybe things are starting to find their middle ground.

God, he fucking hopes so.

 

**20.**

Twenty is the first year he has someone to kiss at midnight. He thinks maybe he understands the hype around it a bit better like this, with Magnus's hands on his hips and in his hair and his friends shouting down to zero around them and his tongue heavy with that same infatuation as last year.

It's the first year where his throat is full to the brim with excitement, where there's so much it doesn't fit and fills his mouth and his lungs and his stomach, washing out any shame to make room for itself. The first year where New Year's is not just bright and brilliant and better than any other day of the year - it's also a thrilling mess of nerves fluttering in his chest and wide eyes burning with contentment.

It's the first year he drinks. Not enough to be as wasted as the dumbass throwing up in the bushes outside, but just enough that he's comfortably loose with the liquid courage and spouting truths to his boyfriend that he'd never admit when sober.

Like at 3:18 when they're curled together on the guest bed in Jace's apartment, the sheets neatly made beneath them and three respectful inches of space between them.

"You're the first boyfriend I've ever had," he says, but that's a well-known fact by everyone in a two mile radius.

"First boy I've ever kissed, too," and Magnus blinks widely at that, just as tipsy as he is but less easily unwound.

Alec kisses him hard and it isn't midnight then, the new year has already begun, but this still feels more like a start than 12:00 ever did.

Twenty is a heat beginning in his lower abdomen, unfurling upwards and forcing his hands to touch Magnus's skin because-

Because Alec has spent _so many_ years resisting every temptation and he just can't anymore, he can't. He has to draw the clothes off his boyfriend and spread his fingers out over his chest, over his heart, has to wonder whether Magnus feels fear there too or if it's somewhere else inside him. He thinks the heat in the bottom of his gut, in the place the guilt has never gone deep enough to touch, is probably the universal home of arousal. Of lust. Of wanting Magnus to kiss him harder and hold him closer and show him everything he's spent so long being so afraid of.

He isn't even drunk. He's tipsy, a little intoxicated by the scent of Magnus's cologne, but he's not _drunk_. Not enough to blame it on the alcohol or lowered inhibitions. There’s nothing making this decision except for him.

So twenty is heat and lust and excitement and a kiss at midnight and more than a kiss at three AM and waking up to find that the infatuation is a lot harder to feel. That maybe the feeling has expanded and moved somewhere else in his body. Somewhere that makes his chest clench with nerves and the backs of his eyes burn with... not relief, but something close. Something he hasn't felt often enough to have a name for.

But.

But there is still a pressure beneath his collarbones and in his vocal chords. A grief, a sadness. Because twenty years is a long time and not long enough and here, laying like this, just makes him ache for a world where the road here wasn't so painful. Where his mother's smile didn't seem just that little bit smaller when his sister let it slip that he was seeing someone.

Where he could feel more than just satisfied and excited, could feel that bright spark of joy everyone seems to carry with them. Where every ounce of it he managed to grab onto wasn't tainted.

Here, with Magnus's fingertips brushing his hip bones and his lips against the junction of his neck, Alec's resolution is simple.

'Be happy.'

 

**21.**

Twenty-one is calm, sweet, gentle. It's coming home to someone and curling up in front of the TV and for the first time in his life being able to honestly say he isn't the least bit lonely.

At 11:39, he cries. Magnus holds him as close as he always does, always has, and whispers sweet nothings into his hair as the minutes tick by. The grief beneath his collarbones is so intense that he feels like he might explode, the relief behind his eyes so great that he wonders if he's emptying out his entire soul on the shoulder of his boyfriend's t-shirt.

Twenty-one is a mirror image of sixteen. A perfect reverse reflection to one of the worst moments in his life.

It's feeling like, for the first time in a long time, he can breathe out completely and breathe in just as easily. It's barely even watching the clock, no countdown or frozen lungs, because he's too focused on kissing Magnus with a heavy tongue and a throat full of exhilaration.

Twenty-one is snapping a picture of his boyfriend when he isn't looking, one where the lines of his jaw and muscles of his arm stand out, grinning brilliantly as he makes it his contact photo. It's affection buzzing in his veins when Magnus shakes his head and smiles, catching him in the act.

Twenty-one is everything inside him catching fire, his whole body white hot and scorching to the touch. This is what love is, where love goes - through his bloodstream and all his limbs and a thin coat inside every one of his organs. It keeps the grief in one place, confined by the wall of adoration around it, and burns away the shame at least for a moment. For as long as he is looking at Magnus and tracing his fingers across the back of his hand and feeling like there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with wanting this.

Twenty-one is 'don't change a thing' because he's starting to feel a little hopeful that maybe if they stay like this forever, the guilt and the grief and the fear will all be burned away beyond recognition. Maybe if they keep doing what they're doing, keep kissing and loving and ignoring the bad things in the world, last year's resolution will eventually be attainable. He'll be happy, wholly and completely with no catches or conditions in the contract.

At twenty-one, New Year's isn't a fresh start or clean state, nor is it a reminder that he could never become the person he wants to be. It resembles nineteen in that way - just a day, just a night, just another rotation of the Earth around the sun.

Unlike nineteen, it still feels important. It's the first year since fifteen that he doesn't spend even a moment wishing he wasn't gay. The first year he doesn't think about his parents calling Magnus 'his friend' when they went to visit, or purposely putting them in separate rooms. That he doesn't think about how much easier, how much less painful, everything would have been if he'd fallen in love with Lydia and gotten married and had two-point-five kids in a house with a white-picket fence.

It's the first year where it feels like it's a good thing that he wants all that with Magnus.

 

**22.**

He feels settled, that year. Calm rests on his shoulders like a shawl covering up the feeling in his collarbones and in his chest. He doesn't cry and he doesn't count down to midnight, even though Magnus is watching the clock like a hawk and pushing him away with a smile every time he tries to kiss him, murmuring about distractions.

Alec shakes his head. Smiles. His body is warm and that blind infatuation from their first meeting is still there in his mouth, right above his empty throat. There is no excitement at twenty-two, just curling up with his partner of nearly three years now and feeling this inexplicable sense of safety. Like what they have here in this house, in between the fingers they lace together and beneath the plush rug they lay on, is indestructible.

He's never been a man full of assurance, never trusted in things to remain steady and secure, but this year he is. This year he's the man laughing into his lover's hair and wiping up the wine they spilled with a teasing remark. He's the man that can take Magnus into his arms, can feel him counting down from ten against the pulse point of his neck, and be sure that everything is going to work out just fine.

It doesn't mean there is no grief twitching in his vocal chords, writhing beneath his collarbones. It doesn't mean he isn't still upset that his mother turned down his invitation to their new home. It doesn't mean he never envies Aline for her painless path to the self-acceptance he still struggles with himself.

It just means that, right now, these things are underwhelming when compared to the realization that he's loved. That he doesn't have to live his entire life never knowing the feeling like he'd thought at seventeen, that maybe a relationship isn't the most important thing but having people to rely on and a safe place to call home is.

At twenty-two, New Year's brings a notion that he could open his mouth and say anything to anyone and the monster of guilt would not devour a thing.

His resolution this year is the same as it was at twenty. Happiness seems like a goal worthy of striving for.

 

**23.**

It's the first one he spends at his parents's house since he moved out nearly five years ago. Magnus goes with him, sitting beside him at the dinner table as his mother serves mashed potatoes and his brother pokes at her peas. The atmosphere is tense, but shrouded in falsity as his father cracks a joke and Max rolls his eyes. Isabelle is still at Saint John's, probably partying in the dorms or out clubbing with her friends.

Twenty-three is a pivotal year for Alec. It's clenching his fists when his mother asks if he and Magnus are still roommates. Biting his lip when his father asks if his boyfriend has a girlfriend.

It's seeing the way Magnus looks at him, searching his eyes for things he knows just how to find, before he turns towards his father. Magnus is perfectly composed, like he always is when dealing with difficult people, and his hand clasps Alec's under the table as he smiles tightly.

"Obviously," he starts slowly, "we're still together. I wouldn't be here if we weren't. And _obviously_ , I don't have a girlfriend. I'm a monogamist and I would never cheat on your son."

Alec feels his blood run hot, feels the backs of his eyes burn, feels his mouth fill and his chest fill and his stomach begin to empty into the base of his spine where strength has made a place for itself. The table is silent, but his mother shifts uncomfortably in her seat and his father is adamantly refusing to look at either of them.

"Mom," Alec says, because he has a spine and he's tired of letting them walk all over it. Because his resolution this year is 'stand up for yourself'. "Dad. I'm gay. I always have been and I always will be and you can't just keep pretending that's not true. It is. I'm gay and I've found someone I'm happy with and I know that it's hard for you to accept that, but can't you at least try? For me? Can't you just-"

He cuts off. His collarbones are sharp and the grief behind them is thick. "I know you love me. Don't let this change that."

New Year's at twenty-three is holding his mother in his arms as she cries against his shoulder, wondering how he never noticed how frail and fragile she was. It's hushing her when she says she's trying to be a good mother, she really is, and of course she'll never love him any less for anything he could possibly do, but she just doesn't know how to be okay with this. It's telling her it's enough that she's making an effort when she sobs that it doesn't make sense to her, that she wants to understand this and understand him, but it doesn't _make_ _sense_ to her.

It's his breath constricted and his father silent, but something in the way he's looking at him that makes his chest feel a little more loose.

It's a start like New Year's in the media is always promised to be. A slate not wiped clean but turned over to its untouched side, the scrapes and cuts and bruises left behind them.

It's hurt feelings that may never heal and language barriers that may never disappear, but it's also a reminder that he's loved, that he's always been loved. That thinking he'd be alone and miserable his whole life was a ridiculous idea to have.

Even if he'd never met Magnus. He'd still have his parents, his family, because maybe it's been uncomfortable around them ever since he came out, but they still call him one a month and want him home each Christmas.

It's okay. They need time to adjust. They aren't perfect people and neither is he. As painful as it may be, he can't expect their entire worldviews to shift just because they love him. That isn't how it works, and he can't hold it against them because at least they're trying.

At least his father asked if there was still any hope for grandkids. At least his mother asked if he'd always known this. They do love him, and it's okay to expect that that would be enough to at have them try to understand him.

At twenty-three, New Year's is falling onto his childhood bed in the room he spent most of his identity crisis locked inside. It's Magnus combing gentle fingers through his hair, iron strength climbing from the base of his spine to the top of his neck, and the grief unfurling from his vocal chords as he tells the man he loves that he wants to spend the rest of his life with him.

It's kissing him at midnight, curling under the covers together, and banishing the memories of sobbing into these same sheets every night for years.

New Year's at twenty-three is a breath of fresh air, unpolluted by uncertainty.

 

**24.**

The first day of the new year, he wakes to sunlight filtered through white curtains. Magnus is sprawled out across him, limbs askew and taking up the whole bed as he always does. His tongue tastes like passion and captivation when Alec kisses him, and Magnus's skin is as hot as Alec's with the affection that burns underneath.

His lower abdomen pools with lust at the way Magnus moves to fling a leg over his waist and grind down against him. Throat full of anticipation, he grabs his hips and rocks into him as hot breath leaves his lips and Magnus's ocean eyes slip shut.

They bask in the sunlight together, in the way it illuminates their solid outlines and the dips between strong bones. His gut is empty, an odd feeling he's still trying to get used to, and his heart clenches only with the worry that they might be late for Jace's house-warming party.

Behind his collarbones, there is still the briefest touch of grief. He knows now that this will never go away, but that he has enough good feelings in the rest of his body to overrule the negativity in such a small area. Besides, the grief reminds him of the struggle he'd gone through to get here, makes the feel of Magnus's skin a thing of wonder and the happy smile he catches in the mirror a cause for awe.

Twenty-four is thanking God for making him gay, because he wouldn't be who he is if he hadn't had to fight tooth and nail to get here. The strength in his spine would not be so prominent if he hadn't spent so much of his life breaking his vertebrae and caving in on himself.

This year, the resolution he made at twenty and again at twenty-two is finally fulfilled.

Happiness, it turns out, settles in the tips of his fingers and toes.

 

 

_Well, we could let our guards down a little easier this time. We could trust that when there's joy, there's nothing dark behind. In spite of history, hope is January white._

 

**Author's Note:**

> This work does deal with a lot of heavy stuff. I cried going over it, not going to lie. If you're reading this because you're struggling, or because you have struggled, just know that there's support out there if you reach for it, and life is changing all the time. I'm also here if anyone wants to talk, whether it's about something heavy or just to chat about fictional characters - you can find me on [Tumblr](http://raphaelsantiago.co.vu/). I love you all <3
> 
> This was actually written a couple of years ago for another fandom that I'm no longer really a part of, but I've decided to bring those works over here for other fandoms and take another look at them. It's part of a series of one-shots I did for Sleeping At Last's album Yearbook - this one for the song January White, from which the italicized header and footnote are taken.


End file.
